I Can't Make You Love Me
by PureBlood Vampira
Summary: The war is over but there are wounds that still need to be healed for Lucius Malfoy. Will the pain of his youth and the revelation of his wife prove too much? One-shot.


Lucius felt the bed dip as his wife of twenty years silently laid down. So much distance was between them and winter had long set in digging in its heels with no signs of abating.

He dared to edge closer and awkwardly placed his hand on her shoulder. She stiffened at the contact and Lucius pulled away his hand. He whispered a quick apology before backing away to his side of the bed. He continued to stare at her back and the way her skin seemed to glow under the streak of moonlight that had snuck its way into their bed chamber.

Selene illuminated not her skin but the faint marks that had started to form around her neck and shoulders. The mark of another; they mocked him. In his own home, his bed, those marks ridiculed him letting him know that his wife belonged to another.

She had grown careless or as he figured she didn't care enough to try to hide that she was having an affair.

He turned from her and tried to search out his anger some sort of rage at being betrayed, the rage to jump from the bed, grab her from the covers and demand she tell him the identity of this other person. This man she so freely gives herself to, this man that has replaced him.

He grips the duvet; he should pull her from the bed by her hair and beat her. That's what his father would have done. His father, when it came to him, his mother and brother, let his wand and fists do the talking.

He closed his eyes shut. Lucius was not his father. No matter how much it hurt he knew he would never lay a finger on her.

He opened his eyes when he felt the bed shift. He sat up to see Narcissa pulling her robe around her and secure it at the waist. She seemed anxious.

"Are you going to him?" he asked looking down at his hands.

Narcissa saw no point in lying. She was done with the denial.

"No, Lucius, I am not going to him," she paused and turned to face him, "I am going to her."

"I'm here in the very place I don't want to be. I want to be with her. She told me yesterday that she was tired of being alone and that we should end it," she sighed heavily almost embarrassed at the words that were about to follow, "and that I should go back to my husband and try to make it work here. It nearly broke me Lucius. I can't...I won't live without her."

He clenched his jaw tears began to rim his eyes; he turned away from her and placed his feet onto the floor.

"I was thinking she shouldn't have to be alone, not when she has me."

"Why?" he looked confused. Narcissa couldn't bear his naivety.

She whispered, "you know why, Lucius. You know why."

He did he clutched his jaw; he could feel his heart break all over again.

He closed his eyes as tears started to fall onto his night shirt. The past, their son, the Dark Lord all of it. It had been eight years since the war had ended and the fall of his former master. It had been five years since the death of their son.

More tears came as he remembered his boy; unlike himself the boy could not dwell with his demons and had killed himself. Draco's death meant redemption was out of reach.

"Draco's," she bit her lip reluctant to speak the word in front of him, but she, her lover, made it okay so she continued, "suicide broke me Lucius, she was there to pick up the pieces. She was there in ways emotionally you never could be; she did what you should have done. It was your arms I should have broken down in, not hers—not a strangers,'" her voice wavered she was on the verge of tears.

"Don't speak of it," he hissed. There was no malice or threat behind the words and she continued.

"No, Lucius that's the problem we never speak of anything. That's what led him to do what he did. It was our fault that our boy…" she started to sob.

"I am sorry Narcissa, I didn't know. I didn't know what kind of man that creature was; I thought my money, my influence in the minstry would keep him safe, would keep us safe. I was the fool thinking that I was above the others untouchable as the devil's right hand."

He bawled up his fists.

"No, it was my fault. If I had resisted that monster, I should have gone straight to the Ministry or Dumbledore anything to have stopped him before he got out of control. I killed him, I killed our son, my son." There was no shame as he wept.

She regarded him; it was too easy and tempting to place the blame for all of their troubles at his feet. At that moment, her emotions were a mixture of hatred and pity. For all his beauty and wealth, Lucius was really a fractured human being. She closed her eyes remembering the many nights they made love and she would trace with slender fingers the scars that ran parallel to his back. Lucius' father had been the devil incarnate.

"I too share some of the blame; I should have done something, anything. Even if it meant leaving and taking him with me but I didn't. I remained silent and shopped and hoped everything would be alright. I was a fool, too caught up in tradition and too cowardly to oppose my husband."

"Is there anything I can do to atone for my sins? How can I make you love me again?" He stood and turned to look at her. Even in the moonlight he could see the thinly veiled hatred and pity in her eyes. She was done and there was nothing he could do.

No matter what he said or how much of the burden she claimed share he would always be to blame and that he could live with. He had made his bed now he was condemned to lie in it.

"Nothing."

"So, I take it you are still leaving?"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath, "you are breaking me, Narcissa."

"You were broken the day our fathers introduced us."

"You are the center of my world, always have been."

"I don't doubt that I was; until he came back."

Silence permeated the air they both knew she spoke the truth.

Lucius rubbed his hands through his hair, her words stung like bees defending their hive.

"You leaving will cause a scandal. What will everyone think? You are leaving a proper marriage to run off with some woman. A whore! Have you no shame?"

Narcissa stood pointing her wand at his chest, "you will watch how speak about her in my presence. I don't care what anyone thinks," she lowered her wand to her side, "this time I will get what I want and no one will stop me Lucius, not even you!"

He rubbed his face. He didn't know how to cope with this. His son now his wife, he walked around the bed and fell to his knees before her.

"Please, I'm begging you. Don't leave; you are the only piece of sanity I have left."

He took her free hand in his turning over the palm and placing a soft kiss in her open hand.

"I love you Narcissa."

"That's not enough, Lucius. You and I both know that." She pulled free of him and turned to head into her closet.

He rose to sit on the bed. He was at a loss. He assumed she was packing, and had confirmation when he heard the thud of a trunk against the wood floor.

She returned from the closet now fully dressed; she moved around the room not once casting a glance in his direction. Silently, he watched her like he had done on many occasions when she would run about the room getting dressed for a ball or gala. It brought a small smile to his lips. But that was the past.

It would not do for him to dwell on the past.

He looked up to find her standing in front of him her cloak on.

"I will collect my things by the end of the week," she continued to stare at him waiting for a reaction.

"I will fight you on this you know. When I'm done you won't get a dime."

Narcissa smoothed out an invisible wrinkle in her cloak. It was his pride talking; she didn't take offense.

"You wont have to fight too hard Lucius, I don't intend to ask for anything."

He sucked his teeth not believing her. "How do you intend to survive with no money? Is your…lover," he hissed the word, "going to take care of you?"

"No, I am perfectly able to care for myself. I am 45 years old Lucius it's time I become self-sufficient.

She turned to leave but stopped when she reached the threshold.

"I have forgiven myself Lucius and I have moved on. It is time you do the same. Don't do what Draco did and let the demons of the past consume you. I still love you."

"Then why are you leaving?"

She turned to face him fully, "if I stay here I too would be consumed." With that being said, she left the room the door closed behind her with a thud. The finality of the situation left him feeling ill.

He wanted to throw something, break anything but he couldn't muster up the strength to grab the nearest object and toss it against the wall. Instead he did what he had always done.

Slowly he made his way to his study searching out his liquor cabinet. He skipped the glasses and drank straight from the bottle. The brown liquid stung creating a pleasant burning sensation in his chest. He collapsed in the chair behind his desk and ran his gaze over the photographs that littered the desk.

A lump had formed in his throat; the memories, the nostalgia the photos invoked in him were unbearable and he retreated from the study and into the dining room taking a seat at the head of the table.

He took another long swig of fire-whiskey before slamming the bottle down onto the heavy oak table. He looked around the room and snarled before rising and making his was way back upstairs. He paused outside the door to his bed chamber and decided against heading into the empty room. He turned and made his way down the long hall that connected the East wing of the home to the main living quarters.

Slowly, he walked the hall taking in the portraits of Malfoys long past. He stopped at the portrait of his father. The familiar undercurrent of fear surged through him and he locked his knees to keep still.

Abraxas looked down at his son eyes hard and lip curled slightly upward in disgust. Lucius locked eyes with his father and refused to look away. He would not be intimidated by the portrait of a dead man.

"Pathetic," Abraxas hissed, "just like your mother."

Lucius tightened his grip on the bottle.

"How dare you?!" Lucius shouted.

The man in the painting laughed, "my boy, my useless boy. Out of my two sons, I just knew you would be the one to achieve greatness; how wrong was I. It should have been you that died all those years ago."

"Hannibal died trying to please you. He wasn't ready for something like that, he didn't want to join; but you forced him. Just like you did with me, I would have never followed the Dark Lord on my own…,"

Abraxas held up his hand. He shook his head his disappointment evident, "you children understand nothing. What I gave your brother and tried to give you was a gift. That man had a vision, a future for the wizarding world I wanted you two to be on ground floor of the empire he was trying to…"

"The bodies of children, Father, make a poor foundation on which to build an empire. That man was a monster, a coward and a murderer."

Abraxas looked taken aback.

"You dare speak against our Lord in such manner?" The elder Malfoy looked affronted before sighing, "rest his soul. I am thankful he is not here to hear such words spoken by someone he valued so dearly."

It was Lucius' turn to take offense.

"Someone he 'valued'," Lucius spoke as if the word itself tasted bitter, "let me tell you how valued I was Father," he hissed with so much venom his father recoiled in his frame.

"That monster would place me under the cruciartius curse on a whim because he felt like it. He came into my home and humiliated me in front of my wife and my son not only that the man demanded that I make Narcissa available to him for his…pleasure. He gave my son, your grandson a task he knew he would fail at only to have a reason to punish him. The man used my son to punish me!"

He paused the anger fueled by the whiskey was making him delirious.

"I felt real valuable escorting my wife to his room like some common Knockturn Alley whore!" He shouted at the man before throwing the bottle against the wall shattering it.

"Rest his soul you say? I hope he burns in hell!" Lucius shouted before ripping the portrait from the wall and bringing it down on the Davenport chest. The frame broke in half. The consumption of whiskey made him unsteady on his feet and the force of the swing brought him for the second time that night to his knees.

He buried his head in his hands and wept. He heaved and let out a great cry that echoed and reverberated throughout the wing.

His vision became blurred and his chest constricted painfully Lucius thought he was dying. A much welcomed outcome given the circumstance. He thought about reaching out to Severus for help and advice like he had done many times over the years before he remembered that his dear friend was dead. It dawned on him that he had no one to turn to before he blacked out on the floor.


End file.
